Angels With Broken Wings
by Demetrius Kirbyfist
Summary: Humanity has survived the horrors of the Second Impact only to be assaulted fifteen years later by monsters. Only this time, it's all a little bit different. Evangelion & Fate/Stay Night fusion. Chapter Three is up.
1. First Day

**Angels With Clipped Wings**

Disclaimer: I do not own any Nasuverse –related works, neither do I own Evangelion. If I did, I wouldn't be writing fanfiction. I would be presumably rolling around on my giant bed of money.

**Edited Note: **Man, I uploaded this badly on my first try. Came out all horrible. This copy should be fine.

**Chapter One**

**First Day-** _An Empty Utopia_

The birds scattered as they fought amongst themselves for the small crumbs being thrown into their flock by the young teenager slumped against the wall.

Shinji Ikari was bored. How long has it been now? The sixteen year old sighed to himself as he tried once more to message his supposed guardian with his mobile phone only to get no response. Jeez, he knew that Tokyo-3 didn't get much service from being so close to a Dead Zone but he hadn't expected a citywide communications blackout.

With a groan he returned to feeding the birds with the remnants of his lunch. At least they showed up on time. The woman who was supposed to be picking him up, the one who worked for Dad had left him waiting on the corner of a busy intersection for what felt like _hours_ but was probably only thirty minutes at most. Which was still ridiculous. Wasn't this 'Lt Colonel Katsuragi' supposed to be military or something? The amount of knowledge Shinji _didn't_ know about the military could fill several large libraries but he was pretty sure that they were supposed to be punctual.

Maybe there had been an emergency of some kind, though you wouldn't be able to tell it from looking. Tokyo-3 was full of people going about their lives completely unconcerned. From travelling here by plane, Shinji knew that this city was a tiny vibrant speck of life in the middle of a wasteland. Burnt out Dead Zones mostly surrounded the city, leaving it marooned in a sea of black and red.

He shook down the chill that had suddenly crawled up his spine. He had his own memories of the Second Impact fifteen years ago. Normally one would never remember anything that had happened so early in their life but a grotesque image of flames and melting things that had once been people had been permanently impressed onto his mind.

He'd been lucky. Most people who had been unfortunate to be caught in a Dead Zone when the Second Impact struck were dead. Either they had perished in their droves or they had been rescued only to kill themselves a few days later. It must have been Shinji's young age that had allowed him to keep his sanity with only a single memory and a few recurring nightmares to show for it. Children were supposed to be resilient, right?

A bright blue Renault messily pulling up to a parking space with a screech in front of him quickly shook him out of his memories. Shinji shook his head at the unseen driver. He didn't even have his license yet and he was pretty sure that even he could drive better than that.

The doors opened and an absolutely stunning woman emerged. Usually Shinji would have gawked at such a beauty. This Shinji though, had other things on his mind. This was the woman who was to have supposed to show up ages ago! It's about time.

"Hi there! Sorry I'm la-"

The Lt Colonel's greeting was interrupted by a massive foot crushing the car she had formerly been occupying.

"Gyaaaaah!" she cried as she quickly rolled out of the way. "It was here after all! Damn monster! How is my insurance supposed to cover that!"

Shinji's knees buckled as he gazed upon what must surely be Death. The inky black foot was curiously human-shaped with five defined toes. It lead up to a black giant, it's indistinct form hidden by its constantly reforming nature. Its skin was like molten pitch, bubbling and dripping long ropes of black ooze to puddle onto the ground. It only had a single arm rising from what looked like a right shoulder. It had no clearly defined head but a bone mask rose out of the pinnacle of its body, a white death's head staring down at the world.

Tokyo-3 swiftly grew a forest of screams as everyone began to run from the monster that had appeared in their midst.

Where…where had it come from? It certainly hadn't been there several seconds ago. It was as if it had stepped out of thin air, walking from a dead void that Man was not meant to see.

A great dollop of the black mud dripped down onto the pavement next to him, steaming as it slowly began to chew through the concrete. Involuntarily, Shinji's mind immediately flashed back to his sole image of the Impact. He didn't know how he knew or why he knew, but he knew. This _thing_ was connected to the Hell that he saw in his nightmares.

"Hey! Snap out of it! We need to run! NOW!"

He felt the world give way underneath him as Katsuragi dragged him to his feet. With a stagger he immediately began to follow her as she began to run.

"What the hell was that thing?" he cried. "How is running supposed to help? We can't outrun that!"

"Don't worry," replied the Lt, still using her cheerful tone as if nothing had happened. Despite this, her eyes had taken a strange manic look that Shinji wasn't certain that he felt comfortable looking at. "It won't try to kill little bugs like us. We just need to get out of the blast zone!"

"Blast zone! What are you talking about Katsuragi?"

The woman pressing her hand over his mouth stopped the rest of Shinji's breathless questions, which was an incredibly awkward and uncomfortable position considering they were both running at the time.

"You should just concentrate on running right now! And please, call me Misato. Katsuragi was my father."

**000**

_Several Minutes Earlier_

The door slid open as Fuyutsuki entered Gendo Ikari's inner sanctum or as some NERV personnel put it, "The Beast's Lair". Fuyutsuki had never liked that particular nickname. He felt it was unfair to most beasts.

The 'Lair' was a large circular room deep underground, even for the rest of the Geofront. Its location was a small oddity, at least to those who weren't truly in the know. Fuyutsuki on the other hand, knew that it had several secret advantages that Gendo was likely to surrender only over his dead body.

The massive circular pattern of runes decorating the floor was only a small part of them.

The man himself sat at his desk in the center of the room, his gloved hands in that familiar pose as always. "News?"

"I have consulted the Board again. The results are unchanging. The Third is in this world. Once again, I can't get a lock on its Class. It could be anything."

"Curious," Gendo replied. "Its corruption must be blurring the barriers between Classes. I didn't know it could do that. But," he continued, steepling his hands further. "Where is it? Our Boundary Fields read no intrusions whatsoever and my familiars have seen nothing out of the ordinary. As the Board has been telling us for the past hour, the Third Servant has been summoned by the World. And yet it is not here. Our entire plan, no, the very reason for Tokyo-3's existence is based on the fact that the Servants should be attacking here! Check it again, Fuyutsuki. Something is wrong."

Fuyutsuki raised an eyebrow. This was the most emotional he had seen his former bitter enemy and current ally be for the past three years. He began to walk out of the room on his futile task when Gendo's terse voice halted him.

The man had taken his glasses off as he received new information remotely from his sources.

"Stop. It's here after all. It's been here all along."

**000**

A few seconds later, the sirens began to wail.

A soft rushing of air was the only noise as the doors opened for Gendo's private elevator that connected his sanctum to the NERV control room. As he stepped out with Fuyutsuki trailing behind him, he silently reviewed the information he had received from his familiars. With that mask it could only be…

He smiled. Of course. That explained everything perfectly.

Fuyutsuki, being far less informed than Gendo gave a nearly inaudible gasp as he saw the monster on the view-screen before averting his eyes.

"I know the Board warned us about this but…I never dreamed I would see such noble beings reduced to such a corrupted monster state."

Gendo gave a small noncommittal noise that communicated precisely what he thought of Fuyutsuki's shock.

"Don't be so surprised. It's exactly what we've been doing for the past fifteen years. We have long lost the right to think such things. But more importantly, _look at it's head._"

Fuyutsuki was opening his mouth to respond but it shut like a trap the moment he saw the giant white skull mask swimming in the body of giant. The blood rushed from his face, leaving him even paler than usual.

"Tha-"

"Yes, it does explain a few things doesn't it? Of course we didn't see it or detect it coming. With a Presence Concealment of that grade, it's probably been lurking in this city the _entire time_ until it lost it's patience and decided to batter it's way through."

As he paused momentarily, Gendo took the moment to thank whatever deities that was available that Presence Concealment faded when in 'attack mode'.

He stood closer to screen calmly, an island of serenity in the ocean of panic that was the NERV command room.

Of course, Gendo was not as unfeeling as he pretended to be. Under his calm façade, his heart was beating as fast of the rest of them. They had been preparing for this for a long time, true. But nothing could truly prepare you for the sight and feel of a Servant in action, even one as colossal and warped as this one. His right hand reached down absent-mindedly to scratch at the back of the left. It had been a long time.

He turned back to his still silent subordinate.

"Problem, Fuyutsuki?"

Fuyutsuki had endured Gendo's mockery ever since that incident fifteen years ago. He could deal with it now. He cleared his throat.

"Ritsuko," he called out to the Head of Research. "Just what is the composition of that fluid that the Servant is secreting?"

The blonde "scientist" turned to the older man, the delicate Crest inscribed on her upper arm briefly glowing from her recent interfacing.

"It's not what you think it is, I assure you. The first thing I did was have the MAGI analyse it as a top priority. I'm afraid it's just a cheap imitation of the real thing. Highly corrosive but it barely registers on the Keter scale."

Gendo nodded, unsurprised. His familiars hadn't registered any long-term damage to their souls and so he'd assumed the best. It was nice for that to happen, for once.

"Excellent. For a moment there, I thought we were in trouble."

**000**

Shinji was coming close to nearly being out of breath. He was good at running, he ran track after all. And he'd often had plenty of practice, whether he liked it or not. But he couldn't just run full pelt like this forever.

He turned to see Misato collapsed in a heap several meters behind.

"Why…why…did I …ever …think this was a good…idea", she wheezed. That strange dangerous look in her eyes was long gone now. She had a strange form of radio held to her ear as she lay panting on the ground.

"How… the hell… were you able to keep that pace up… and not be _dead_ by now?" she demanded.

He shrugged as he replied "I've always been good at running."

"Bull…shit. There's good at running and then there's…there's…"

She stopped as she listened to the incoherent noise of the radio warble on for a few seconds. Frowning, she got to her feet and looked at the gargantuan monster in the distance, looked back at their own surroundings and then back at the monster.

"Yeah. That might just be far enough. I can barely believe that they'd do it in here though."

"Far enough for wha-"

"Get down!"

With an unusual speed for someone so exhausted, the woman leapt at Shinji and took out his legs in a diving tackle, knocking both of them off the sidewalk and into the mouth of an alleyway. Shinji's startled scream was muffled as an earth-shattering boom momentarily deafened his ears. Scant moments later, the building they were now sheltered behind shook slightly and a small wave of backwash swept down the street that they had been standing in.

"What was that?"

Misato looked down at him in his prone position, her sunglasses knocked askew and hanging from one side of her face.

"I told you. Blast zone."

**000**

The command center watched silently as the Servant became Ground Zero for several dozen missile strikes of varying strength. Though the black mass of the Servant absorbed the majority of the explosion's power, waves of backwash was blasted into the surrounding area.

Gendo smiled, finding a brief moment of mirth in this catastrophe. For this engagement, NERV was _theoretically_ placed under the SDF's command, and they weren't planning for NERV to pull its trump card until all the more reliable methods of destruction had failed. Such ignorance had clearly been displayed here and what's more, such reckless endangerment of human lives by firing brazenly at the monster that had infiltrated past their defensive line would be a massive political blow. He very much doubted that the military would have authority over NERV by the time of the next engagement. There would be no more fetters.

As the widespread evacuation continued, the dust cloud faded to reveal the Servant to be completely unharmed. It's flowing skin was unmarred, an example of hideous perfection in the field of destruction around it.

"As expected," Fuyutsuki claimed. "Ordinary weapons will have little effect on them."

The rain of projectiles slowly petered out as Gendo looked expectantly at a red phone sitting at his desk. The moment it rang, his hand snatched the receiver up only to put it down just a few seconds later.

"We have authorisation for direct supernatural intervention."

Fuyutsuki nodded. "I see. Shigeru, put me on the line to Ayanami's cell."

"No. The First Child is not ready for deployment yet. She has taken far longer than predicted to recover from the last simulation. The catatonia has ended but her synch rate with Unit-01 would be abysmal. We will deploy the other Child."

"The Second? But she's in England!"

"Of course not the Second. The Third Child is on his way now."

"So PENDRAGON finally found the Third? But what would he pilot? There are no free…Oh." Fuyutsuki stopped as he caught on. He lowered his voice so not even Ritsuko could hear them.

"No. _No._ Why would you…What…That doesn't-"

He was at a loss for words.

"You think I don't know that?" Gendo's voice was similarly lowered. "You think I want this? Trust me, if I had any choice in the matter it would have been very different." With those words Gendo turned away from his subordinate and walked back into the elevator.

"He was _your_ mistake, Kozo. And now we have to deal with it. You handle the control room, I'll be down at Unit-00's containment chambers."

The elevator doors closed.

**000**

"There sure are a lot of elevators here," Shinji remarked. After the brief missile fiasco, Misato had radioed for a NERV chauffeur to drive by and pick them up to take them to HQ. He kinda wondered why they just didn't do that in the first place rather than have him get picked up by Misato.  
>Since then they had been on some sort of weird car elevator, a car trainelevator thing, a regular elevator after they had disembarked and were now standing in a glass-sided elevator moving down.  
>On the plus side, it gave him time to talk to Misato more. Now that his initial shock over being nearly killed by first a giant sludge monster and then an air strike, she was pretty pleasant company.<p>

"Yeah, I was surprised when I first came here too," Misato said. "But they really are necessary. HQ is pretty far underground. Also, I think your father just really likes them for some reason."

"My father…He's in command, isn't he?"

"That's right!" she chirped. "You still have those files I gave you, you can read up on them in your spare time." She stopped and looked suspiciously at him. "Come to think of it, I never actually asked you your name. You _are_Shinji Ikari, right?"

"Er…yes?"

"Oh thank God," she laughed. "Imagine if I'd accidentally given those files to a complete stranger without asking!"  
>Shinji joined in her laughter unreservedly. Judging from what he'd seen so far, it wouldn't be strange for this woman to do that.<br>"Why, I'd have to execute you on the spot!"  
>Misato kept laughing. Shinji didn't.<p>

A few more minutes of idle chatter followed before Shinji manned up enough to ask the question that had been hovering at the edge of his mind since he'd been called here.  
>Or at least, he tried. But the next sight took his breath away as the elevator exited the tunnel it had been travelling down and he could finally see where he was.<p>

It was as if they were suspended above an endless void that stretched forever in all directions. As they rattled lower though, he began to make out the details. It was a massive underground cavern that stretched for kilometres. Most of it was dark but several large sections were lit up to reveal a rocky barren surface and buildings. Many buildings.  
>Just from a glance he could see a set of huge greenhouses next to a large scrawl of low-lying refugee centres for the inhabitants of Tokyo-3 next to a series of cranes large enough to be considered buildings themselves. The cavern was under a constant state of construction, new structures constantly expanding outwards. Directly below them in the center of a cavern was large cluster of squat fortress buildings with a single tower that proudly bore the NERV insignia.<p>

"I can't believe it," he breathed. "I get to see a real live Geofront. _The _Geofront!"

"Yeah, it's pretty nice," his companion said nonchalantly. "This is after all, the last fortress mankind will ever need."

He turned to her to ask Misato just what she meant by that last remark when the elevator glided to a smooth stop inside the top floor of the tower and she quickly ushered him out.

"No more time for questions. Follow me."

Kozo Fuyutsuki frowned at the mammoth shape of the Servant on the view-screen. It was wandering around at random now, tipping over and destroying buildings in its quest. Thankfully, the entire city had managed to evacuate from those areas.

"What must it be like," he mused. "To have come so far, endured so much to reach your goal and now that you are here, you don't even know where it is. Sad."

To be fair, NERV and the military were doing more than their fair share at keeping it confused. If at any time it started to look like it was focussing on it's task they hit it with a few missiles to lure it away into trying to attack what was annoying it. The thing seemed to have been robbed of most of it's reasoning. It was like fooling a child.

But still, it was causing significant amounts of damage and had already claimed several dozen lives. Ritsuko had already left to help prep the new pilot. He could only hope that they were getting Unit-00 ready for combat soon.

"Hello Shinji. It's been a long time."

Shinji couldn't help himself backing away slightly. His father had unexpectedly joined them in the corridors and told Misato to head back to the command center while he took Shinji personally.  
>Shinji couldn't help but think that something very bad was about to happen.<p>

"H-Hello father. …What am I doing here?"

"A very good question," his father replied. The next thing he said did not surprise Shinji one bit. "It began with the event called the Second Impact that occurred fifteen years ago."

"…"

"As you are no doubt aware, the Impact is called so because it was the result of a large and destructive meteor shower. It was as if the entire surface of the Earth was sprayed with buckshot. Not only this, but the meteors contained substances and elements unknown to Man. The sites of impact burned with something like napalm, only far more long lasting. Strange radiations were emitted from the wreckage of the meteors that degraded the brain cells of any living being inside it. These still-burning sites are the Dead Zones.  
>It was the near downfall of all of humanity but the result was a single unified group of humanity forged by going through the incredible hardships. Mankind, though seemingly weakened, was made stronger than ever," he said, beginning to sound like the announcers on the old child documentaries about the Impact they used to play.<p>

"That story is of course, a complete nonsensical fabrication," Gendo concluded. He looked back to Shinji, no doubt expecting him to be shocked. He wasn't. Ever since he'd seen that thing back in the center of Tokyo-3, the thing that smelled like old fires and the desolation of fifteen years ago, he'd known that the monster was tied to the Impact, and that by extension that the official story was clearly a lie.  
>He wasn't sure <em>how<em>he knew this though. But just seeing the gunk oozing out of its veins seemed to have affected him.

"The Impact was caused by those monsters, wasn't it?" he said quietly, a brief flash of burning buildings crossing his mind momentarily.

"Well, yes." Gendo looked at his son oddly in a way that Shinji couldn't fathom. Was he surprised? Disappointed? Maybe even proud?

After adjusting his glasses, the Ikari patriarch continued.

"The real cause is extraterrestrial life," he said with a completely straight face.

"…What."

"Don't look at me like that, Shinji. The things that caused the Dead Zones were not meteorites but some kind of alien terraforming machines, altering the landscape around them and creating the Zones. I don't know the science behind it but then again, barely anyone does. These beings were light-years ahead of us, using science and technology in an indescribable fashion that goes against anything we knew of physics, trying to shape our planet into something completely inimical to life as we know it."

"But that thing back in the city wasn't an alien!"

"Not quite. It was a self-operating autonomous invasion and resettlement unit, created through bioengineering that our Head of Research can only _begin_to understand. We've codenamed them 'Servants'. Their task is to explore and to wipe out any native resistance to the terraforming, and in the long run, expand it themselves. But hope is not lost! We have prepared for them. Using backwards engineering and human ingenuity, we have a means to fight back."

Shinji was getting a little caught up in the words, he couldn't help himself.  
>"Wait! How do we do that?"<p>

As they neared the end of the corridor, the final set of doors slid open.  
>"With these."<p>

"…"

They were standing only a long walkway suspended over an overly large room. The height of the walkway was in fact, just perfect for looking the giant robot straight in the eyes.  
>Wait, giant robot!<p>

"The Spirit-Class Mobile Combat Mechanized Unit. Engineered from alien technology, these are the last hopes for all humanity." He turned to the surprised Shinji to face him in the eye. "And we need you to pilot them into combat."

"…Are you _insane?_ Why me? I'm not trained! I'm not even an adult yet! Why, Why would I pilot this thing!"  
>Shinji waved his hands at the robot to emphasize. It was a huge humanoid, taller than most buildings. It had a plain blue and white colour scheme and it's horned head with it's glaring eyes reminded him somehow of a hungry beast. An <em>angry<em>hungry beast.

"You are one of the only ones who can pilot it, Shinji. Listen to me and calm…down. We were able to re-engineer it but this model, Unit-00 is a prototype and is filled with certain…quirks. It can only be piloted by someone with extensive exposure to a Dead Zone. As you can imagine, it is very rare to find such people alive. Trust me, Shinji. If I had any other choice I could have taken, I would have."

"N-No! There are others! This sort of thing is…is just beyond me! Father, please! I can't do this."

"Well-"

"I can't believe this! You don't speak to me for three years and when you do send for me, it's because you want me to fight to the death in a giant robot?"

"Shinji, given enough time, I am sure I could convince you." Gendo frowned as he listened to a report on the current state of affairs aboveground with his headset. He reached up with his hand. Shinji had to stop himself from flinching back. Would his father try to strike him? Shinji honestly had no idea what he would do then.  
>"But we are out of time. Shinji, <em>look into my eyes<em>."

"Why-"  
>Despite himself, Shinji couldn't help but let his gaze flicker over briefly to meet Gendo's just as he took his obscuring glasses off.<br>His eyes were orange. His father's eyes were orange. He didn't remember that when did that happen orange they were orange yellow blue red red red orange...  
>With a brief shake, Shinji snapped himself out of it. He must have been mistaken before somehow. Gendo's eyes were brown, as they always were.<p>

"Wha-What were we saying again?"

"I'd just finished telling you about our situation and you'd just agreed to pilot the Spirit, remember?"

"Oh…that's right. Yes. Yes I will."

**000**

The next few minutes passed in a daze for Shinji. He vaguely remembered changing into a strange suit that was far too tight for his tastes but the blonde researcher told him it was completely necessary. He couldn't really remember any details on her, she was a blur to him. To be fair, so were most things to him by then.  
>He'd sat inside a giant plug of some kind that was inserted into Unit-00. Or at least, he thought he did. Things seemed to be getting kind of metaphorical to him at that point.<p>

Liquid…some kind of liquid. He could breath it though and it was clear so it wasn't really there. A lot of funny colours happened at that point and his left hand really hurt for some reason but then the pain went away so it's all good. All good. All good.  
>He began to get the vague feeling that something was wrong. This didn't feel like aliens, if it made any sense. It didn't feel technological at all. He began to feel that maybe Gendo wasn't really telling him the whole truth. But he could think about it later as he goes up the tube. Lots later. Just need to keep going, keep going, keep going<p>

He eventually emerged from his drowsy state into full consciousness once more to find himself above-ground inside the Spirit, preparing to face off against the increasingly pissed-off looking skull monster.

"Aw fuck."

**000**

_Somewhat Earlier_

Fuyutsuki continued to watch the idiot Servant criss-cross it's paths as NERV lead it on a wild goose chase away from civilians. To be honest, this was far from how he expected the Fifth War to proceed.

And then the monster paused in mid-step; the thing that may or may not be its head rose high as if sniffing the air. And then it brought its fist down into the ground, the impact cratering the concrete.  
>It continued it's desperate excavation, ignoring the ineffective weapons they tried to goad it with. Its single arm was already nearly sunk up to its shoulder into the ground.<p>

Just moments later, his headset crackled as Ritsuko told him that Shinji's bonding with Unit-00 had been a complete success.  
>"Shit," he breathed. The Servant must have detected its activation. It knew where it's objective was now. "Shit. Shit. I didn't think they would still be able to do that."<p>

With a sickening motion, the Servant began to _flow _into its buried arm, slowly turning to fluid and seeping into the ground. Kozo Fuyutsuki did not say another word but instead left the command center immediately.

As he strode down the corridor, he spoke rapidly into his headset.  
>"Yes, I'm going to need the express to the surface waiting for me. Thank you."<p>

One swift detour to the sealed chamber concealed underneath the mundane armoury later and Fuyutsuki entered the high-speed express elevator train to the surface holding a long thin black case in one hand.

There were some things that a man just had to do himself.

**000**

The Servant was nearly half into the ground. The annoying missiles and bullets had long since stopped. Once it had found it's true goal, it simply ignored the futile attackers.  
>And in turn, they had slowly stopped when they realised that they had just been wasting munitions.<p>

So it came as a great surprise when what seemed to be a regular bullet impacted its hide and ripped through it, tracing a line of fire across its chest. No, more than that. Its impact fractured it, spreading tiny cracks into the very nature of its being. The thick black mud began to merge around the spiritual wounds and begin his regeneration but it…it hurt so much. It hurt far more than anything so small should.

Hidden in a sniper den halfway across the city, Fuyutsuki smiled as he reloaded for his next shot.

**000**

Ritsuko returned to the command center far earlier than Gendo did. The preparation and activation for Unit-00 had gone smoothly. So smooth in fact, that it was almost suspicious. Nobody had ever managed to obtain such a high Synch rate with a Spirit unit on first bonding before.  
>Especially not on the insane prototype model Unit-00, which was known for eating it's potential pilots. The way that the Commander's son had calmed it so easily was uncanny.<p>

That word could easily describe Shinji Ikari as well. Her first meeting with him had been…strange. He had been so calm, despite his imminent duel to the death with a horrific monster. His unresponsive gaze had unnerved her.  
>Surely, something was wrong here. Out of all the people in NERV, Ritsuko was one of those who were most "in the know", third only to the Commander and the Vice-Commander themselves. There shouldn't be things happening that she couldn't explain and yet, there they were.<p>

What was currently happening aboveground was another one of them.

"He's doing what?" she roared. "And he's actually hurting it? Give me a closer look."

Her subordinate and former apprentice Maya Ibuki manipulated the screens to show the Vice-Commander of all of NERV lying on his belly behind a screen of rubble with an odd-looking sniper rifle in his hands.

Ritsuko didn't recognise the weapon, but she did know what the discarded long case behind Fuyutsuki was.  
>"He raided the Conceptual Armoury," she breathed, barely believing her eyes.<p>

**000**

As he fired another magical bullet into his gargantuan foe, Fuyutsuki resigned himself to the fact that if the Servant didn't kill him, the old men likely would. The tiny amount of magical weapons hidden in the Conceptual Armoury was one of their treasures, the result of a painstaking search through the ravaged post-Impact world.

Entire treasuries had been emptied to obtain even the meagre amount of weapons that the Conceptual Armoury contained. They had even gone to the lengths of stealing the Third Holy Scripture from a ruined Church outpost that had been in the middle of an emerging Dead Zone.

The Scripture in question of course, was still sitting safely inside the Armoury. It was far beyond Fuyutsuki's abilities to wield it. But he had settled for the next best thing, another great treasure that had been unearthed in Egypt decades ago and hidden away ever since until it came into NERV's hands after the Impact. Which is why Fuyutsuki was doing this himself.  
>He could have ordered a soldier to do this instead. They probably would have been much better at it than he. But he couldn't let another take the inevitable punishment for endangering an Artifact that would be so valuable in the Endgame scenario.<p>

The thunder from the third shot echoed in his ears as another harbinger of death impacted into the Servant, sending it reeling back and knocking it back into it's fully solid form, abandoning it's attempt to flow into the Geofront.

Excellent. Fuyutsuki knew that this weapon couldn't slay the Servant. Its purpose was to slay far grander beings than the deranged monster currently devastating Tokyo-3. But still, each bullet fired from its chambers wreaked havoc on the Servant's spiritual nature, causing it great pain.  
>Where conventional weapons had failed, the Conceptual Weapon in his hands would distract it long enough for the weapon truly capable of slaying it to arrive.<p>

He reached for the fourth bullet and was in the process of placing it into the chamber when an ear-piercing screech echoed through the city, the first sound that the Third Servant had emitted.  
>It was looking directly in his direction. With a chill down his back, Fuyutsuki knew that it could see him. <em>It could see him.<em>  
>Throwing the bullets aside, he threw the priceless gun roughly back into its case. There was nothing he could now but run for the entry point as if all the dogs of Hell were after him. Looking back at the Servant scrambling insect-like at impossible speeds towards him, Fuyutsuki decided that Hell would have been much more preferable.<p>

**000**

_Present_

"Aw fuck."

Shinji's awakened mind quickly took in the charging Servant. He wasn't quite sure how he'd gotten up here aboveground inside the Spirit but he knew what he had to do. He was supposed to fight it, right? That's what he had wanted to do after all. Maybe.

Without thinking, Unit-00 threw it's shoulder forward and collided with the charging monster at precisely the correct moment, knocking it off it's feet and sending it sprawling with a supreme combination of force and precision.

**000**

"It's about time!"

Fuyutsuki scrambled out of the way as the Spirit's impact repelled the charging Servant, throwing gooey ropes of the monstrosity's black mud everywhere. The sounds of the two gargantuan monsters clashing was deafening, nearly reaching a physical presence.

It was one of the grandest fights that a mortal man could ever see, corrupted divine mysteries colliding and corroding each other. But he could be spectator later, back when he's safely in the command centre. He just had to get bac-

A particularly mighty blow from the fight behind him shook the earth far more than he anticipated. Fuyutsuki's left leg slammed into the ground the entirely wrong way, twisting his ankle and throwing him to the ground.  
>He blindly threw out his hands to break his fall only to have them plunge into one of the small pools of mud that the Third Servant had thrown everywhere.<br>Oh.

_Oh._

Fuyutsuki collapsed into his own personal hell.

**000**

Had…had he done that?

Shinji had no idea how he had been able to push the Servant aside like that. The Spirit was responding to him almost completely instinctively, moving with a speed and grace that he himself could never muster.

The plug he was in had disappeared and it was as if he and his chair were floating far above the ground, directing the Spirit that was a barely seen extension of himself. Compared to him right now, the Servant seemed to be swimming through treacle, slowed down to a miniscule rate.  
>He laughed. He had been so afraid but he had this. He <em>actually had this<em>.

The Spirit's arm reached down to grab the fallen Servant but the monster _shifted_and completely evaded his swing. It moved ludicrously fast, skittering along the ground like some sort of giant insect.

How. How did it get so fast? Wasn't it slow just a moment ago? How-

His line of thought was interrupted as the Servant lunged forward in a spray of debris and caught his Spirit by the throat with its solitary arm.  
>Shinji's eyes bulged as he felt the thing constrict his throat. How? How? How was it hurting him through the Unit?<br>His world once again exploded in pain as the Servant used its grip on him to swing him viciously into the ground before launching itself upwards and planting the full force of it's weight into his abdomen.

The Servant's semi-fluid body flowed over the prone Spirit, smothering him as it's hideous acids flowed over the Spirit, looking for a point of access to flow into and invade.  
>It hurt…it hurt so much.<p>

All earlier bravado was lost as Shinji screamed and screamed and screamed. Ohgodohgodohgod everything was burning ithurtsithurtsithurts the acid melted up his nervous system and into his body.

_"Shinji! Whatever you're feeling, it's not real! It's not real!"_

Right. Right. Not real. It's all in his head. He…just has to lift.

His dying muscles strained as main mass of the Servant was slowly lifted off Unit-00. The Spirit raised its right foot and planted a solid blow into the creature's face, sending it flying off him.

He threw himself forward and buried a fist into the center of the Servant's bulk, knocking it backwards.

It had been hiding its true speed before to serve as a trump card. Now that Shinji had his measure, he could do this. He could do this. He just had to keep hurting it. Keep hitting and hitting it, never letting it get it's footing back.  
>It all just boiled down to one stark truth. He had to kill it before it could kill him. He couldn't run away. He mustn't run away. He can't outrun that thing, even in the Spirit. No flight, just fight.<p>

The Servant swung it's arm at him in a wild scything arc but the Spirit just jinked to the side and grabbed the Servant by it's unprotected left side. He rammed both of his hands into the thing's body and _stretched._

The Third Servant made its second outcry in the battle as it screamed in pain as it was slowly ripped apart. A flood of blood and mud poured out of the gaping hole in its side in a great wave that swamped the street below.

This was easy now that he got the hang of it. The Servant was strong but the Spirit's power just seemed to outclass it in nearly every way. What's more the beast only had one arm, on it's right side. No matter what it did, its left side would always be completely open.

Pushing the wounded Servant against a convenient building, Shinji got his fingers underneath the mask. That part looked important. Maybe it was how he killed it.  
>"Let's see what you <em>really <em>look like, alien!"

The mask was torn away only to reveal a second skull swimming in the ooze behind the first.  
>It seized on his momentary confusion to press it's back fully against the building as a brace and kicked out both legs into Unit-00's chest, sending him toppling over.<p>

Instead of pressing the advantage the wounded monster leapt back several hundred meters and watched it's foe carefully.  
>Shinji manoeuvred the Spirit back to its feet slowly. The earlier rush he had felt seemed to be dying down and Unit-00 felt heavier on its feet. But in return, the Servant was still bleeding freely and looked like it was far less steady on its feet. The two monsters eyed each other cautiously.<p>

**000**

The command centre watched silently as they faced off. Gendo steepled his hands together once more. This was the proving ground, where NERV's chances were either made or broken.  
>If only it could have been Rei rather than Shinji piloting.<p>

Maya looked up from her console.  
>"I'm picking up a large spike of energy in the Servant! It's PHANTASM grade!"<p>

Misato didn't waste any time in snatching the radio off Ritsuko to the pilot of Unit-00.

"Shinji! You need to evade! Evade now!"

"What's going on? Why isn't anyone telling me anything?"

A slow ripping sound echoed through the battlefield as a geyser of polluted blood suddenly burst from the Servant's left shoulder. A single blood-red limb emerged from the wound, an arm of impossible length that had joints where no joints should be.

For a long stunned moment, the fully extended arm hung over the ruined battlefield like the worst of omens.  
>And then it shot forward at nearly supersonic speeds, bending around buildings, infallibly spearing towards its target, the chest of Unit-00.<p>

It was unstoppable. It was death that one could barely see, let alone avoid…

…Unit-00 reached up and caught it by its wrist; just scant meters from touching the center of the Spirit's chest.

"I am," Shinji panted, "so sick of you by now."

**000**

"Well, that was a lot easier than I thought it would be," Misato said. She quickly turned on her old friend.  
>"Ritsuko, you told me that PHANTASM weapons were supposed to be incredibly powerful! What gives?"<br>"Well… I admit that that was a bit more underwhelming than I expected but-"

"Another energy spike! The MAGI are detecting Ether manipulation!"

The demonic arm wriggled slightly inside Unit-00's grasp and closed into a fist. Once again, the command centres radio was filled with the sound of Shinji screaming.

**000**

He thrashed wildly in his chair. The earlier illusion was gone. Shinji was in the closed environment of the entry plug. What's more, the plug was collapsing while still inside the Spirit, being crushed by an unseen fist.

Dents began to appear on the sides of the plug as it slowly began to be squeezed inward. The fluid inside the tube compacted, crushing Shinji under its weight. He wasn't just taking sympathetic pain from his connection to the Spirit anymore. This was him, this was _real_.

His cries rose as he felt his ribs begin to give way. They were slowly breaking, he could hear them audibly groaning under the pressure.

_Snap._

_Snap._

_Snap._

The last one wasn't a rib. The only thing he could was scream as his leg dangled uselessly.

_Snap._

Another rib.

_Snap._

That one was a finger.

_Snap.  
>Snap.<br>Snap.  
>Snap.<br>Snap._

**000**

"Eject the pod! Eject it now!"

"I'm sorry Commander Katsuragi, but that won't help." Gendo remained completely calm. "The ether clump being used by the Servant is connected to his entry plug and by extension Shinji. Even if he would eject, he would still be crushed."

The entry plug crumpled inside the Spirit like an aluminium can. Shinji stopped screaming.

**000**

From the viewers at NERV HQ, it seemed like the air around Unit-00 suddenly exploded. A small magical shockwave poured out it in all directions as the unit was suddenly lit up with a strange luminescence.  
>Where the tide of energy struck the invisible ether construct mirroring the entry plug, it burst back into its separate particles.<p>

Wordlessly, Unit-00 reeled the Third Servant in using it's own grotesquely oversized arm as the line.  
>The Servant's unblinking skull, it's true face slammed into the Spirit's gauntleted fist with an explosive <em>crack!<em>

Again and again and again. Unit-00 punched the startled monster in the face several more times before grabbing its face with both hands and digging its fingers into it. Tainted blood spurted out several times before Unit-00's hands located what seemed to have been the head and squeezed mercilessly.

The fight ended quickly.

**000**

_Later_

By the time Kozo Fuyutsuki had woken up, night had fallen. A buzzing fluorescent light that promised to get very annoying lit his private hospital room.

"Hello Fuyutsuki. I see you're awake"

A devil walked into the room. Fuyutsuki might have been worried once but it was a familiar devil that he'd known for years.

"Hello Gendo."

An awkward pause descended. In the time that elapses, Fuyutsuki felt like he could almost hear music coming from the next room.

As always, Gendo started it.  
>"I thought you'd given up being a hero fifteen years ago."<p>

Kozo gave a small self-depreciating chuckle.  
>"I guess some dreams never die, even for an old fool like me. And then we have to pay the price"<br>As he said the last, he looked down at his heavily bandaged hands. He couldn't feel anything in them, as they were completely numb. He didn't know the extent of the damages. He had a sinking feeling he might not want to know the extent of the damages.

"We found you lying in the wreckage. You'd nearly fallen into a pool of the stuff. Be thankful it only burned your hands."

"Hmph," Kozo grunted. "It didn't feel like it was just my hands. It hurt like I was swimming in the stuff."

"Well, it might just be a cheap imitation of the real thing but it's still a thaumaturgical acid designed only to inflict pain and death. It's supposed to hurt far beyond regular means."

"So…"Fuyutsuki motioned with his bandaged hands. "How extensive was the damage?"

"Some serious acid burns and necrosis, nothing major. Easily healed. You're going to have to keep those bandages on for a few days though. Might have to keep from sniping monsters for at least a week."

"Heh. About that, though…they're going to have my head on a stick for that little jaunt, aren't they?"

"Not if I can help it," Gendo adjusted his glasses. "What you did out there was foolish, dangerous and suicidally stupid to an extreme I have rarely seen, not to mention putting one of our necessary pieces into danger far before it's supposed to be. But still, you helped save us. All of us. You probably won't get a medal out of it but I'll placate the old men."

With those words he began to stride out of the room, pausing only at the doorway.  
>"By the way, when the bandages come off your hands aren't going to be something people will want to see in public. Take this."<p>

He took a small package out of his pocket and threw it onto his bedspread before leaving without another word.

Curiously, he took the package gingerly in his hands and slowly opened it. A few seconds of silence followed before the room was resounding with Fuyutsuki's laughter.]

**000**

Gendo sat behind his desk as the inevitable meeting/interrogation proceeded.

Surrounding him were eight black monoliths, each one floating slightly above the ground. Each monolith was blank save for red engraved words reading 'SANGRAAL'.

The monoliths marked SANGRAAL-00 and SANGRAAL-01 were faded, signifying that those members were not attending this meeting. This did not surprise Gendo. SANGRAAL-01 did not usually deign to speak to people like him and Gendo was one of the few people who knew SANGRAAL-00's secret. He would only speak at the end of all things.

SANGRAAL-02 cut the bickering off with the sound of his voice.  
>"Enough. We have trusted Ikari so far on these matters and the Longinus was not harmed. His subordinate will go unpunished."<p>

SANGRAAL-06 took up the next item.  
>"We had wasted far too long arguing on that anyway. The real problem here is how the Third Servant managed to breach your so-called impenetrable defence. Tell me Ikari, how were you not prepared for the possibility of a corrupted Assassin class?"<p>

Gendo gave an inaudible sigh. He'd known that this would come up.

"I'm sorry gentlemen but," a small cough from SANGRAAL-04 interrupted him, causing Gendo to look up in annoyance before continuing.  
>"I'm sorry gentlemen <em>and lady<em>but one simply cannot plan for a Presence Concealment of that high a rank. It sailed through our best Boundary Fields without letting off a single alarm, invisible to all forms of scrutiny. Luckily, the Geofront is sealed off from the majority of Tokyo-3 and so the Servant was forced to reveal itself there."

SANGRAAL-05 swiftly interrupted.  
>"But the civilian casualties taken from it's complete bypassing of your defences are not to happen again. All of those people will be needed for when it starts to move."<p>

"Indeed," Gendo nodded. "And I assure you that this will not happen again. Our fields are set up in such a way that we should be able to detect the Servant coming from miles off, giving us more than enough time to evacuate into the Geofront."

"The pilot. What precisely happened there?" SANGRAAL-04 was curious.

"He is alive through fortunate means, though only barely. When he lost consciousness, he stopped pacifying the Mad Enhancement on the Unit-00 and it briefly took over and finished the fight."

General noises of shock and horror were heard throughout the room.  
>"<em>Unit-00<em>in the Berserker state!"

"Yes. Luckily we were able to remote detonate the bomb-clusters we concealed in its vital nerve systems to temporarily bring it down for sedation. It has been safely recovered."

"But what of the other pilots? We clearly need to bring them in. The Third Child will not be sufficient on his own."

"The First should be battle-ready again soon. I cannot speak of the status of the Second."

"But I can," SANGRAAL-04 chimed in a second time. "Her studies in the Clock Tower are progressing marvellously and there have been no recent problems. She should be able to be relocated to Tokyo-3 promptly."

"Excellent."

"Enough, Ikari. We have another problem. The significant…"

The rest of the meeting passed in the standard fashion without incident. When the end was declared, the monoliths faded out as the runes projecting them deactivated. One monolith however, remained.

Gendo turned to his side so he could properly face SANGRAAL-07.

"All is going according to the plan."

"As expected," the voice emanating from 07 was completely blank of any identification or intention. Clearly modified by either technological or magical means. Or perhaps the member just actually spoke like that. Such an empty void of a voice.  
>"The other SANGRAAL still suspect nothing. Tell me Ikari, how do you find my latest gift?"<p>

"The implantation was...exceedingly painful but a perfect success. I haven't had the chance to use them so far. Hopefully, I never will."

"They should be used sparingly, I approve. The Fractal Rainbow is far too much power for an insignificant magus such as you. I see you have been wearing the Mystic Eye Killers I told you to wear. This is fortunate. If you had not, it would have ripped you asunder by now, reinforced Circuits or no reinforced Circuits."

"They were a generous gift."

"No doubt. Since the destruction of the Counter Guardians fifteen years ago, you are one of the last hopes for mankind's survival against what is to come. It is only fitting that you be armed with the greatest of weapons. Now, you have the Black and the White. The Red is in good hands. All that leaves is the Jewel. I trust you have began your plans for that inevitability?"

"Yes."

With nothing more to say, the monolith faded out, leaving Gendo alone in the suddenly dark room.

**000**

**End Day**

.

..

...

...

...

ShE feLt sIck sHe FelT wROng  
>SHe FElT sICk sHe FElt wrONg<br>ShE feLt sIck sHe FelT wROng

ShE feLt sIck sHe FelT wROng

ShE feLt sIck sHe FelT wROng

ShE feLt sIck sHe FelT wROng

She could feel the weight, sitting on her soul. Her muscles quivered and moved under the surface of her skin like living animals. More and more of her would be pushed out for these things, even with just the one currently inside her.

But this wasn't how it should go. This was wrong. Wrongwrongwrongwrongwrong.

She could feel it creeping in her veins. Once she'd tried to rip it out but that's not allowed anymore. This is not the right thing she should have nownownow it was broken and wrong and what is more fitting for a broken/wrong thing like her it feels so heavy soon she'll carry the load but now all she can do is be crushed under it's weight.

She can smell burning see a rabbit's throat torn she has never seen a rabbit but she knows their blood soon it will be more rabbits are so unsatisfactory more more more to satisfy the weight she can feel growing.

ShE feLt sIck sHe FelT wROng

Her lips curved in a smile as she remembered that. She was going to have a baby soon.


	2. Second Day

**Chapter Two**

**Author's Note: **My assault against good writing continues! This chapter took much longer than I thought it would.

**Day Two-** _Calm Air_

Shinji woke with a start. Fresh daylight was streaming through an opened window. It was an unfamiliar ceiling in an unfamiliar room. It looked somewhat like a hospital room actually. He blinked dully a few times as he stretched. Ah. Aaah. That hurt. He was stiff all over and a dull pain was spread over his entire body.  
>Looking down, he saw that his torso and below was completely swathed in strange brown bandages with some weird squiggles on them.<p>

Gah. What was that? It felt like…it felt like…the events of the previous day rushed before his eyes as he remembered. That…that…that was…how did he not notice that? He was being lied to. Again.

Five seconds later his finger jammed onto the buzzer to call the attendant nurse so hard that it's casing nearly cracked.

**000**

Ritsuko snickered, much of the bridge personnel joining in with her.

"Stop that," Fuyutsuki ordered, though he was smiling as well.

"Well, I'm sorry sir. I knew you and the Commander were close but I had no idea things between you two had gone so far," she teased. Behind her Makoto tried and failed to suppress his laughter.

"Ritsuko, as Vice-Commander of NERV, I am _ordering_you to cease this immediately."

Ritsuko smiled the carefree smile of one who knows that they are completely indispensable and continued.  
>"But you're a matching pair now! Isn't it sweet?"<p>

Fuyutsuki sighed heavily and pressed his white-gloved hands into his pockets.

**000**

A pale hand patted the side of the great purple armoured beast. In direct comparison to the massive Unit-01, Rei Ayanami looked like a tiny porcelain doll, fragile and delicate.

Gendo had enough experience with her by now to know that was only half-true.  
>"Feeling better?"<p>

There was no response. The white child ran her hand down Unit-01's armoured face, a slow croon emerging from her.  
>It may have just been his imagination but the unmanned Spirit seemed to shudder slightly, responding to the girl's touch.<p>

Rei began to sway slightly and suddenly pressed herself hard against the side of Unit-01, as if she was trying to get as much skin contact with the Spirit as possible. This time Gendo definitely heard the drawn-out groan emitted from the motionless Unit-01 as it reacted to the white child.

After a few seconds, she retreated back to Gendo, meeting his covered eyes with her own scarlet ones.

"Ready to go back now?"

She nodded silently.

**000**

A few minutes later, Gendo walked into the command centre to find that something had clearly happened in his absence as a few of the less wise computer technicians took one look at him and nearly started laughing.  
>Or at least, they tried. They wilted under his gaze and slowly turned back to the computers pretending as if that hadn't happened.<p>

Gendo decided he really didn't want to know.

"Ritsuko," he called out. "Call up the sync data of all three Pilots. There's something I need to test."

**000**

Ryoji Kaji greeted the new day with a slow moan followed by immediate revitalisation through the miracles of coffee. His job had always required him to visit foreign places and he was used to it by now. But every now and then, he still felt nostalgia for his home country.  
>No…Not for his home country exactly. But for his memories of it, before the Second Impact.<p>

He scoured those feelings out of his head with another gulp of boiling hot coffee. It tasted awful. What he needed right now was-

"KAAAAJJJIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!"

-definitely not Asuka, especially when she was in one of her moods.

"Good morning Asuka. Slept well?"

"Not as well as I _could_have," the red-haired sixteen year old said, her eyes lingering on his body in a way that Kaji was trying his damnedest to ignore. One of his greatest fears was waking up one night to find her invading his room to watch him sleep. It was only a matter of time now.

"Have you seen the videos of the Third Child against the Servant?," she cried. "And the sync rate he got with his Spirit? It even outstripped _mine_!"

"You shouldn't get upset ove-"

"I'm not upset! How _dare_he! I bet he's like some kind of hot-blooded professional ace pilot who'd never tolerate a rival! …It's about time I got some decent competition. I can't wait to see the look on his face when I defeat him!"

She paused a moment to consider something.  
>"To get such a powerful sync rate and grace with his Spirit, he must be another magical prodigy!"<p>

**000**

"Magic? What the hell are you talking about?"  
>Shinji had no idea what Misato was trying to tell him.<p>

Some time had passed after he had started babbling incoherently at the attendant nurse. After some debate, Misato arrived to talk to him. Her first words to him had been a question, asking if he had read the file she'd given to him yet.  
>Of course he hadn't. When had he had the time?<p>

When he had replied in this manner, her next words were to tell him that that was good, as he wouldn't have to immediately forget the lies that it was filled with. They hadn't been planning on telling him yet but since he'd already figured part of it out, it was better to tell him the truth rather than let one of their key personnel try to clumsily investigate things for himself.

At first, Shinji had been excited. But after Misato's reply he realised that she was just teasing him, though he had no clue why.

"Yes Shinji, magic. Although you should probably call it magecraft. Some people get _really_uptight about you confusing the two, believe me."

"What?"

"…Where do I even start? To put it simply Shinji, I am a sorcerer."

**000**

"Today?"

"Yes. A flight has been prepared for you and Pilot Langley. Unit-02 will be transported over via an accompanying Wing flight," the blonde man smoothed his suit absentmindedly as he handed a sealed envelope to Kaji.  
>"These contain your orders, Enforcer. Do not open it until you are en route. Trust me, we <em>will<em>know."

Kaji nodded as he slipped the plans inside his jacket.  
>Such an early mobilisation was against what he had managed to understand of the overall plan. The Third Servant must have scared them more than they let on, to even contemplate of releasing the dangerous Unit-02. Did they think that the combined forces of both Third and First Children wouldn't be able to handle additional Servant-class attacks?<p>

It was possible. After all, the Third had appeared to be that of Assassin-class, notoriously weak in prolonged combat. What would the Fourth be?

**000**

_Two hours later…_

His gaze going to his wristwatch, Kaji hoped that this wouldn't take long. He might be late for his mandatory flight to Japan.

"So these are the orders?"

He nodded his assent.  
>"Brixley gave it to me not two hours ago when he told me of the flight."<br>Noting the fingers beginning to tug at the envelope's sealing, he attempted to warn her off.  
>"Don't try to open that. It has a-"<p>

"An alarm spell encoded into it, I know," she said as she delicately slit the envelope open, the magecraft inside it shattering into a cloud of briefly visible iridescence.  
>"You should know by now that such things are meaningless to me," she purred as she began inspecting the now exposed sheathe of paper.<p>

"One day I'm going have to learn how you do that."  
>"Oh Kaji, you're far too much of a worthless mage to even try."<p>

He took the casual insult in his stride, accustomed to her mannerisms by now. And it was true, compared to her he might as well be some idiot who ran around only knowing basic strengthening techniques.

"Well…that's interesting. I had no idea the Association were that interested. It makes sense though," her other hand reaching up to trace along his stubbled chin, "that they'd send you to do it. It's such a shame though, having to be deprived of your company for so long."

Brushing her hand aside, Kaji took back his orders, shovelling them back into the envelope as he did so.  
>"Somehow, I think you'll manage."<p>

She gave a brief snort of laughter that told him all he needed to know. Both of them knew that she hadn't been exactly faithful to their little fling, which didn't bother him one little bit. He'd never been one for commitment anyway.

Swinging his arm in a mock bow, he spoke up in a gallant tone. "By your leave, milady?"

She chuckled as she waved him off. "Please. I know you need to go now."

**000**

"What…what are you even saying Misato?"

"Blech. I knew this was going to be hard. Here, look at this," she said as she picked up the flimsy plastic knife that had come with his hospital meal tray.

"What about it-"

His words were cut short by the knife burying itself to the hilt in the wall behind him. With a curious feeling of detachment, Shinji noticed how close the quivering blade was to his face. If it had just been a few inches closer it could have _killed_him!

"Pretty neat huh? That actually took a fair bit of reinforcement. It would have been more efficient to just transmute it into metal or something but I've never really gotten the hang of alchemy stuff," Misato said, almost looking embarrassed at her mistake.  
>"My own talent in magecraft lies more in binding po…"<p>

She stopped as she saw Shinji slump back onto his mattress in a faint.  
>"…Maybe that wasn't the best way to prove it."<p>

**000**

When Shinji opened his eyes again, the first thing he saw was Misato leaning over him to see if he was alright.  
>With a short scream he scrambled backwards, pressing his back against the wall.<p>

"You nearly killed me!"

"It was an accident!"

"B-But..the knife..and…the knife!"

"Calm down," a third voice sounded out, seemingly very amused at her surroundings. Shaking his head, Shinji took in the third occupant of the room. It was the blonde scientist lady he vaguely remembered from before.

"I'm Dr Ritsuko Akagi, head of Research. And relax. As scary as she might seem, Misato won't try to stab you in your sleep."  
>She was smiling, highly amused at the idea.<br>"Despite her…unorthodox methods, she was just trying to show you the truth."

"Th..Then it's true?"

"To an extent," Ritsuko said as she pried the knife out of the wall. A brief look of concentration passed through her face and the knife transformed, changing from plastic to steel before distorting and crumpling itself into a little ball.

"…Show-off."

Ignoring Misato, Shinji gaped at Ritsuko, surprise clearly showing in his face.  
>"Then, you too?"<p>

"Of course Shinji! Magecraft and sorcery are deeply held secrets after all, did you honestly think a single mundane person would be in the upper echelons of NERV?"

"But I thought you were a scientist!"

"Oh, but I _am_a scientist. Just not the type you thought I was. Transmutation is just one of my specialties."

"So you're like Misato?"

Ritsuko gave a chuckle at the idea while Misato just looked more and more annoyed. "By magi standards, Misato is barely literate. She's a special case."  
>Her voice had taken a teasing tone to it as the purple-haired Lieutenant fumed.<p>

"Well…at least I don't dye my hair blonde!"

"No. You just dye yours _purple_instead."

"What! This is my natural hair colour! It even goes with my eyes! Look at them! Looooook at them!"

**000**

Step.

Step.

Step.

Tokyo-3 was a _horrible_place to build a city. Absolutely surrounded by Dead Zones, it was like building a city in a graveyard. Most people who lived there were either NERV personnel, their relatives or people trying to sell things to them.

Step.

Step.

Step.

The city was filled with trees and parkland so people wouldn't feel the need to leave to see scenery. This was for the best as the only way to leave Tokyo-3 in the first place was by plane. The only other alternative would be travelling through the Dead Zones and that was widely agreed to be suicide.

Step.

Step.

Step.

_Worse_than suicide maybe. For while Tokyo-3 had it's fair share of suicides, they were all by the usual methods. Not even they ever tried it by walking into the Dead Zones.

Step.

Step.

Step.

Nobody walks into Dead Zones, even if they want to die. You just _don't_.

Step.

Step.

Step.

There was a lake, or more accurately, the remnants of one. Its shattered bowl was filled with polluted water staining into the flat black landscape. Tokyo-3 was just a dot on the horizon here. Ashes were everywhere. On the ground, in the water, in the air, in your mind.  
>Cupped hands slowly reached down into the lake, taking a great handful of the toxin into receiving lips.<p>

good

good

good

There were no more steps.

**000**

"So if magecraft is real…than what are the Servants? What are they really?"

"Demons," Misato replied with absolute conviction, her fingers going to the cross she wore around her neck in response. "Second Impact was the opening of Hell into the modern world. Thanks to the brave sacrifices of some," she clutched it harder for some reason "the Gates were sealed shut and buried beneath the Geofront. The Servants are powerful demons left over from the Second Impact that wish to re-open the Gates and destroy the world!"

He was taken back. Such a ridiculous story, delivered with full genuine emotion. And was it really such a ridiculous story after all? Not that long ago, Shinji would have thought that magic was false but he'd seen it right in front of him. What about demons?  
>Ugh. His head hurt. Really, <em>really<em>badly. He needed to think about this more.

Some of his pain must have been evident to the two women as Misato stopped talking and Ritsuko ducked out of the doorway and out of the room, as if scared of something. What an odd reaction, he thought. She didn't seem shy before.

"I guess I'll give you the rest of the explanation on everything when you're feeling better," Misato said apologetically once Ritsuko had left the room. "It's easy to forget you were nearly killed just the day before."

"Anyway," she said as she pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket, "you ought to be discharged later today. When you are, I'll be ready to pick you up. You will be staying in my apartment, after all."

"What? Why?"

"Why wouldn't you be? You are my new apprentice after all."  
>Seeing his face she continued, "Despite what <em>certain people<em> might say I have a perfectly good grasp of theoretical magecraft. You were never supposed to have been deceived by that alien story for long after all, and you have some decent amount of Magic Circuits in you."  
>With a flourish, she thrust the paper into his trembling hands.<br>"See? It's right there in the schedule that's been drawn up for you!"

The paper read:

6:00 am: Wake Up, Breakfast (I hope you like ramen!)  
>6:30 am: Early morning combat training<br>7:00 am: School  
>3:00 pm: School ends, Be Escorted to HQ<br>3:20 pm: Spirit tests/training exercises  
>5:00 pm: Mandatory medical<br>5:10 pm: Leave HQ  
>5:30 pm: Dinner<br>6:00 pm Magecraft theory lesson, practical lesson, demonstrations etc etc :)  
>9:00 pm Sleep (Mandatory)<p>

Did…did she write this herself? He didn't think that the official NERV schedules were in the habit of having smiley faces drawn up. After the events of the previous day and this, he was nearly in a daze. He didn't _think _he was dreaming, so as crazy as it all was, this strange world he had been thrown into was the real one.  
>He might as well go with the tides rather than swept away by them.<p>

"Misato, this doesn't give me any sections for free time."

"_What_ time?" she said, looking honestly puzzled.

**000**

Ba-dum.

Ba-dum.

Ba-dum.

Asuka stopped drumming her fingers against the plane's windowsill as she gazed out on the dead vistas.  
>Was that..?<br>It _was._

A cloud of immense Bounded Fields stretching in all directions, completely encompassing Tokyo-3 and stretching far out into the Dead Zones surrounding it.  
>Was that even possible?<p>

Asuka Langley was widely recognised as one of her generation's greatest prodigies and had been gladly accepted into the Clock Tower at a young age, despite her half Japanese heritage. She was, and she would be the first to admit it, a genius.

So why was the composition of the magecraft behind the fields completely beyond her understanding?  
>She gave a small shudder as her senses alerted her to the fact that the plane had just flown through another one of the concentric fields. What kind of defence was this? This feeling? It was almost as if the entire city had been converted into some great Workshop.<p>

As the plane touched down in Tokyo-3's small airport, she raised herself from her seat and disembarked. This backwater was far more interesting than she thought it would be.

As she and Kaji left the plane, a small bird swept down from its perch on the control tower. Kaji, as if expecting it, raised his arm and allowed the familiar to perch on it like some sort of hunting hawk.  
>After looking it in the eyes for a long moment, he turned back to Asuka.<p>

"We have an appointment with Commander Ikari, it seems."

**000**

"Here we are!," Misato cried as her replacement loaned car pulled up aside an apartment building.  
>"Shinji, we're going to ne…Shinji?"<p>

"Is…is it over?" he gasped from his foetal position. Somehow, driving with Misato had been far more terrifying than being pummelled into the ground by a Servant. At least with the Servant he could fight back.

"I don't drive that bad! If you keep complaining, I'm going to have to turn you into a frog!"  
>Shinji was pretty sure she couldn't actually follow through with that threat. Just in case though, he shut his mouth.<p>

"You'll love this," she said as they walked out of the elevator. "It's an absolutely wonderful apartment and I get it for free! You just have to see it."

In retrospect, Shinji decided that it really was a very nice apartment. It was incredibly large and roomy. Much larger than the place where he and his guardian used to live.  
>The first time he saw it though; he could have mistaken it for the First Circle of Hell.<p>

Clothes were strewn _everywhere_, the kitchen was a mess covered with empty instant ramen boxes and dirty dishes. The living room was in just as bad shape, the only remotely clean surface being the couch in front of the television. He had no doubt that the entire apartment was absolutely filled with cockroaches, penguins, mice and…penguins?  
>What.<p>

"Oh, that's just Pen-Pen. He's my hot-spring penguin familiar. Did you know that they're completely extinct? I rescued his corpse from that massive Dead Zone in Antarctica a few years back. Isn't he absolutely adorable?"

The familiar in question traded a long-suffering look with Shinji before slowly waddling into the bathroom and closing the door behind him. The penguin seemed thoroughly unimpressed.

"I'm not sure if I did it right though. I don't think familiars are supposed to be that independent," she said as she turned back to Shinji.  
>"So, how do you like your wonderful new home?"<p>

"Uhh…", Misato looked at him with a glance that just _promised_ a new amphibious outlook on life.  
>"It's very good! Yeah! I like it. Like it a lot."<p>

**000**

The door slid open as Asuka and Kaji walked into the ridiculously large office. The first thing she noticed was the leyline that passed directly underneath the floor. That would explain why he would build his sanctum here, so far away from the rest of the base.

_Runes_ huh? Symbolic magecraft was considered rather 'quaint' to the Clock Tower and it's alumni. It surprised her that this 'Commander Ikari' would devote himself to such magecraft. What was next, witchcraft?  
>That said, the incredibly complex runic display that covered every inch of the marble floor was not something to take lightly. She had never delved into the runic arts much but several potent destructive sigils represented themselves far too often to her tastes.<br>Combined with Boundary Fields swathing the room, this level of defence was almost as if this office was the Commander's Workshop itself.  
>But that very idea was ludicrous. Only a fool would open up his Workshop in an area that he invited complete strangers into regularly.<p>

The man himself was dwarfed by his surroundings, his desk sitting alone in the center of the room.

"So you are Pilot Langley. I've heard a lot about you."

The thing that stood out about him most were his eyes. Or rather, the lack thereof. The thick orange glasses completely cover them, shading them from view entirely. Why would someone wear _orange_glasses?

"Oh?"

"I'm told that you amazed the Department of Spiritual Evocation with your thesis, despite only being sixteen. I've heard you described as 'the Langley Wunderchild', the 'greatest prodigy of this generation'.

His words contained nothing but recognition of her deeds. His tone was flat and level. So why did it seem like he was sneering at her? His flat blank eyes looked through her, as if daring her to live up to her reputation.

And she could. She knew she could. So why did she feel so _small_right now?

She looked down, shattering eye contact. There. That was better.

"Unit-02 is still being shipped as the Wing flight was delayed by heavy storms across Mid-East Asia. It should be arrive by tomorrow, at which I will expect you to join the other Pilots in their training exercises every day at 3:20 pm. You will be assigned a…"

**000**

_Several Minutes Later_

During Asuka's interview/interrogation, Kaji had remained standing by the side, watching his former charge.  
>When she left carrying a map leading to her new quarters, he remained.<p>

"Tell me, Mr Kaji. What interests do our friends at the Association have in our business?"

"Quite a lot actually," he passed a familiar envelope over the desk. "See for yourself."

"Hurm…obtain files…detailed blueprints of Spirit construction…the true nature of the MAGI? Well, they certainly expect a lot from you. Who else has seen these?"

"Just you, me and Number 4. She was the one who broke the seal in the first place."

"As expected. Does she suspect anything herself?"

"Not that I could tell. I have no idea why she wanted to see them in the first place."

"Four is always planning _something._ She knows the risks of doing it right under Six's nose too. I can't imagine that it's purely out of interest for the Second Child's welfare."

**000**

For the second time that day, Shinji found himself staring at an unfamiliar ceiling. The sleeping mat was lumpy and uncomfortable. Or maybe that was from the previous meal he'd had. He firmly decided to never let Misato cook again. How could you screw up instant ramen?

More to the point, he couldn't sleep. How could he be expected to, after all that happened in his life over the past two days?  
>After a half an hour with no success, he stood up. He needed some fresh air and time to think. Quietly sliding the door open, Shinji walked into the living room.<p>

A quick glance was enough to tell him that his erstwhile guardian was sound asleep in her own bedroom.  
>It wouldn't be too hard to just walk out the door and get some air would it? Just keep quiet and don't step on the beer bottles.<p>

He was nearly to the door when-

"Waaaark."

Holy shi-! Shinji nearly jumped but managed to restrain himself at the last minute. Somehow Pen-Pen had managed to sneak up on him. How the familiar had managed this, he had no idea.

"Err…hello Pen-Pen?"  
>He had no idea if the penguin could understand him or not. On one hand it was just a penguin, on the other hand it was a penguin <em>familiar<em>and Shinji had no idea how intelligent those were.

"Waaark."

"Uhh…how are you doing, you corpse…penguin…thing?"

"Waark."

"I see." Feeling the penguin's resolute stare, he began to back off. "I'll just be going then."

Surprisingly, Pen-Pen backed away. Giving a final 'Wark' the penguin slowly waddled off back into its room.  
>What was that all about?<p>

**000**

_Somewhat Later_

Shinji had not meant to have done this, honest. How had a 'little fresh air' turned into 'wandering the streets of Tokyo-3'?  
>Sure, it had some of the lowest crime rates in the world and he was pretty certain he could remember the way home but this was just…stupid.<p>

Even at night the streets still contained many people, bustling off in their own private worlds off to who knows where. He wanted to get away from all that for a bit.

Which is why he came to the lake.  
>Tokyo-3 contained three lakes inside city borders, each of them encased in a small section of parkland. It was a garden city, full of greenery and sights to discourage the citizenry from looking outside the city.<br>The lake in question was part of the "Miyama Memorial Parklands", whatever that was.

Just staring out at the night sky, all alone.

Well, mostly alone.

Shinji was first alerted to this when he heard the humming. At first he had dismissed the formless sound as part of his imagination but as it increased in volume, he recognised it from his own music classes. He had played that tune himself.  
>"Hallelujah" from Handel's Messiah. It was an easy tune to hum and could easily get stuck in your head.<p>

He turned to see the sound coming from someone sitting on a large boulder on the shore.

"Hello."

**000**

Fuyutsuki woke with a start as the buzzing inside his head increased. He instinctively muttered a few words and it ceased.

Wasting no time, he leapt to his feet and got dressed quickly. Throwing a gown to keep out the cold he hurried down the stairs into a small back room that nobody but he had ever entered.

It was the Spirit Board. The Fourth Servant had been drawn down to this mortal earth. A distinct lack of alarms going off told him that wherever it was, it had yet to approach Tokyo-3. If it had even come within several hundred kilometres, the Bounded Fields being emitted by Unit-01 would have surely picked it up.  
>…Unless it was <em>another<em>twisted Assassin type.

Which is why determining the class would be his first priority, if it could even be distinguished under the corruption. It would require-

His thoughts were cut off as the buzzing inside his skull rose once more to nigh-intolerable levels before he cut it off again. Why would the Board sound again?  
>Ah.<p>

The Fourth was just a blip on the radar now. The Fifth had begun to march.

**000**

There was a lake, or more accurately, the remnants of one. Its shattered bowl was filled with polluted water staining into the flat black landscape. Tokyo-3 was just a dot on the horizon here. Ashes were everywhere. On the ground, in the water, in the air, in your mind.  
>A single trail of footprints led to its basin. There was no trail leading back.<p>

A rhythmic thumping beneath the water broke the long silence, as if an age-old heart had begun to beat.  
>The dead water rippled and began to peel back as it gouged itself out of a hole in existence. Before long, the lake overflowed with putrid liquid meat, an eternal supply bubbling out of the heart of the world.<p>

Sightless eyes beheld the end of the world and found it good.

**End Day**

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gOoD


	3. Third Day: Morning

**Author's Notes: **When it comes to writing, I can be one slow son of a bitch. The third chapter is finally done now though. Reviews are appreciated.

Chapter Three

**Day Three- **_A Curious Storm_

He turned to see the sound coming from someone sitting on a large boulder on the shore.

"Hello."

The figure slowly slid off the rock and walked out of the shadows. It was a girl, around the same age as him, maybe even a bit younger.

Shinji had never met an albino in person before but that could be the only explanation. It was as if she'd been drained of nearly all colour, a lonely ghost standing on the shore.

Red eyes blinked underneath a ragged mop of grey hair.

"Hello," she said again.

"…Hello?" Shinji replied weakly. Who was this girl? Nobody just goes up to talk to complete strangers anymore. Not to mention the…well, the _everything _that looked wrong about her.

"You are Shinji Ikari, son of Commander Ikari."

It was said blankly and without intent, a statement rather than a question.

"H-How did you know that?"

Shinji began to back away from the strange girl as she slowly began to advance on him, closing the distance between them at an appreciable rate.

"You are the boy who stole Unit-00 from me."

She was increasing pace now. Shinji keep backing away wildly without thinking, just feeling that he couldn't let _this girl _close to him.

"I didn't steal anything! How do you know all of this anyway? Who _are_ you?"

"Me? Not important. More important than you though. But that's not hard. You're just an accident that's stolen my proper place. I can't imagine there's anything significant about you at all."

His eyes narrowing, he stepped forward, ignoring the girl's repulsive presence. He had spent his entire time here getting pushed around with barely a say. Not that long ago, he had just saved everyone in the city, maybe even the world. Who was she to say anything of him?

"But that was just an Assassin-class," she said, her gaze pinning his train of thought to the ground. "They're pathetic, barely even Heroic Spirits at all."

At this point, it could be safe to say that Shinji had no idea of what was going on at all. This was becoming a disturbingly common experience lately. When was Misato going to explain everything to him again?

Before he could say anything, she immediately closed the distance on him, her hand rising to shove itself inside his mouth. A slick oily taste flooded his mouth.

Startled, he tripped over, bringing them both down, her body landing on top of him. She was so cold…and yet she was filled with warmth, a scurrying frantic heat. A _hungry _heat.

…

Showing her first expression the entire time, she blushed slightly but refused to move, her palm still covering his mouth. Her body writhed against him in a manner that would certainly been pleasant under any other circumstances.

Breathing heavily, she hushed him.

"Can't you hear that?"

There was no sound apart from his quick terrified breathing. Despite this, the strange girl slowly got to her feet, brushing herself off.

"We should do this again sometime."

A moment later, the sirens began to wail.

0000

"Hey! Do you hear that?"

Jiro Watanabe looked up at his friend and fellow co-worker Hiroshi who was leaning over the side of their relatively small fishing boat.

"What's there to hear? Can't be the sound of fish, doesn't seem to be any of those little fuckers for miles around," he complained.

"Nah, it feels like something's slapping 'gainst the hull," he replied. "Here, come have a look at this."

Getting to his feet, Jiro leaned over the side.

"…Huh. Looks like a bit of kelp or something."

True enough; something that looked nothing more than the large strands of seaweed was softly lapping against the hull.

"That's weird. Where do you think that came from? I don't remember setting anchor in some fucking seaweed."

"Probably just some drift or something."

"I don't think so. It's too big for that, look."

Raising his lamp, Hiroshi illuminated the surrounding area, spreading a circle of light through the pre-dawn skies.

The boat was surrounded, adrift in a field of kelp that stretched as far as they could see in the hazy light.

"What the fu-"

A sudden _crack!_ Reverberated throughout the lonely ocean followed by a slow slurp. The lantern went out.

000

_snack gristle bone_

The Fifth had a name once but it had been overridden by a great rage and a terrible strength.

It drifted through the ocean as a cloud of killing intent, driving away all life before it.

There was one place it needed to reach.

The guardians were strong but so was it. Every soul made it stronger. It needed more souls.

There was only one path.

With a reach that encompassed the ocean's depth, it ripped into the seafloor, ploughing through bedrock as if it was sand.

This was an island kingdom. It knew islands. Islands and screams.

000

The Fourth was dead.

At the moment of its terrible conception, it had been devoured from the inside by an _other _that did not recognise divine mysteries.

The primordial soup in the ruined lake overflowed, sending out feelers. The Other knew this place. It felt the call of a thing that it did not know, a call of power and grandeur.

What was it to dare to presume to call it?

There was nothing recognised as existing here except the Other. Only the Other and things that it swept aside from its mere presence. Part of it was compelled to head towards the city, to drown it's inhabitants in the folds of it's flesh and claim the city as it's own.

The Other quashed the remnants of the Fourth inside it with barely a thought. It did not do such things. It was an old and it was patient. A thousand years could pass as if it was a mere blink of an eye to it.

But there was no time for a thousand years, a dissonant voice sprang up in the beatific chorus of it's synchronised mind. It must be done _now._

The Fourth was insistent. For the first time, the Other was forced to recognise another being into it's private existence, another existence with meaning. The remains of the Fourth could not entirely be consumed inside it.

Very well.

It will sweep forward. The Fourth mentioned something about 'guardians' but the Other destroyed it's objections. Aside from the Other and the Fourth, all other beings were just illusions, momentary light springing forth from the broken mirror shards of the universe.

There would be no resistance.

As it's soundless mating call ripped the night in half, the Other prepared to breed.

000

_The sound of the gun echoed through the air. It didn't get to fire a second time as a gloved h__and swiftly enclosed the wrist of the hand holding the gun and squeezed, feeling the fragile bones shatter into fragments as the second fist slammed into the gunman's exposed neck, killing him instantly._

_The man hoisted the guard's corpse as the other members of the security team opened fire, the bullets impacting on the human shield. A quick word and an inscribed rune later, the remaining guards scattered as the corpse was thrown into their midst, bursting into magical flame as a crude Molotov Cocktail._

_While they were disoriented, the man blurred, stretching the capabilities of the eye to track him as he leapt down and picked up the fallen gun as he rolled. Squeezing the trigger, the guards quickly joined their friend as corpses._

_Silently, the man continued on his journey, his rune-enhanced legs propelling him down the hallway at superhuman speed._

_Mortal bodyguards…was this some kind of joke? Presumably Katsuragi had planned on his Lancer doing the serious guard work. An amateur mistake, especially since the sounds echoing from the titanic clash outside informed him that Lancer was still currently occupied._

_All was progressing according to plan._

_The sound of shouts resounded through the building as another security team discovered the bodies he had left behind. They would very quickly be on his trail. Of course, he had planned for this. He stopped running, his legs dragging across the ground from the sheer momentum his magically enhanced speed had built up. As he reached a corner, he knelt down and withdrew an old-fashioned fountain pen from his jacket._

_With the smell of burning wood, the Mystic Code inscribed a complex runic system upon the floor, shortening what would have been painstaking work to a few short seconds._

_It was part of the plan that he was going to have to use this sooner or later; it would simply be most advantageous for him to use it now._

_With this done, he burst back into a run. Time was off the essence here, even with the help of Raidho._

_A few seconds and three corners later, he reached his destination. A wooden door at the end of this particular hallway. This was it._

_He didn't even break stride, much less slow down. The door caved in with a single blow of his Uruz-enhanced fist, not pausing as he trampled it over._

"_We had a deal! What kin-"_

_He stopped talking as his eyes took in the surrounding scene. The empty room was one thing, the skull hanging in the shadows was another. The skull moved, dragging a body of shadows behind it._

_Needless to say, this hadn't been what he was expecting at all._

_He didn't even bother trying to turn around. At the full momentum he had picked up, it wasn't going to be at all possible. Instead he continued at full pelt, leaping into the opposite wall at a speed that would have broken his legs if it weren't for his protective runes._

_Having turned his body into a living projectile, he made his escape _through _the wall, bursting into an accompanying room._

_Or at least, that was the plan._

_Instead, he was slammed onto his back as an ebony arm snaked out and coathangered him mid-leap._

"_Argh!"_

_Pain exploded in his back as he was slammed down to the floor at a ridiculous velocity. In giving with his Origin, the magical defences and reinforcements layered upon his body stopped it from killing him several times over. Unfortunately, he had nothing that stopped it feeling like he'd taken several swings of a sledgehammer to the spine._

_The white skull swam in his vision blurrily._

…_Ugh. He wasn't cut out to fight Servants, no mortal was. No amount of reinforcement could make it so. Luckily, he had a bit more than simple physical enhancement and runes to back him up. With proper use and the advantage of surprise, his Thousand-Word Rewriter could even the odds._

_He rolled away from Assassin in a blur, retrieving the enamel fountain pen from his jacket as he did so. A tiny scratch of its ink on the wooden floor re-wrote a boundary field around him. That should give him the few precious seconds needed to fully inscribe the spirit war-_

_Assassin reached _through _the field and casually smacked the Mystic Code out of his hands, the force of the blow sending the young magus sprawling._

_The final legacy of his family, a Mystic Code forged from the teeth and tongues of several generations of Rokubungi patriarchs was crushed under its foot carelessly._

_Within moments, the Servant reached down and grabbed him by the neck, hoisting him up to eye level before doing one of the most surprising things an Assassin could do. Speaking._

"_Gendo."_

000

"Gendo."

"Gendo!"

He woke to the sound of alarms resounding through his small personal quarters in NERV.

000

_Several Minutes Later…_

"Give me the full situation," he said as he and Fuyutsuki entered the battle room of NERV HQ.

"Where are they?"

Ritsuko looked up from the MAGI array, troubled.

"As far as they can read, nowhere. Unit-01 hasn't detected anything within range yet either."

"Another Assassin?"

Fuyutsuki , who had woken Gendo earlier with the news of _two _Servants spoke up.

Gendo shook his head.

"The deck may be stacked against us but not that much. Another Assassin is impossible. The Fourth and the Fifth _will_ attack. The only possible explanation for why they haven't already is that they are in hiding or…they have already started their attack in a way that we cannot conceive of. How are the Pilots?"

"Teams are already on their way to their homes to escort them to their Spirit Units," replied Makoto, who was acting Chief of Operations until his superior officer reported in. Misato wasn't here yet, no doubt joining the team escorting the Third Child.

"Good. I want them into their Spirits and on constant alert for any possible strike."

The noise in the already busy command room increased as the red telephone on Gendo's desk rang out, ringing only for a moment before it was snatched up.

"Ikari," said the man on the other end, one of NERV's official UN liaisons. "Satellites have picked up the approach of a suspected threat off the west coast of Japan."

"Go on."

"Whatever the hell it is, it's a swimmer of some kind. It only raised itself up to the surface for a few minutes but that was enough for us to see. It's huge, Ikari."

"…Details?"

"Not much but current extrapolations from what parts of it we saw…well…it's at least quadruple the size of the Third."

"I see," he received this news with no crack of his façade. "Any idea where it is now?"

"It dived and we lost track of it. I'm sorry but we have no idea where in the ocean it is now."

"It won't have gone far. Goodbye."

The receiver clicked down.

"We have reports of an oceanic threat. We need to mobilise the Wings for possible long-range Spirit deployment."

"We have an incoming message from Lt Col Katsuragi."

"It's about time she checked in," Ritsuko said. "Put her onscreen."

What they got however was hardly reassuring.

"We've got a problem down here! _Shinji is gone_!"

000

"Crap! I'm not supposed to be here! Not now!"

The grey haired girl gave a short childish giggle.

"You won't get into too much trouble. After all, you can just blame me. I'll take the responsibility for it. That's what your kind want, isn't it?"

"My…my kind?"

"…Weak," she dismissed him. "But enough talk. Those are the evacuation alarms, Pilot. Unit-00 needs you. Come on," her voice lifting an octave as she suddenly took his hand. It felt like a corpse.

"I'll escort you right there. I know a shortcut."

Shinji had little time to ponder this sudden and inexplicable mood change before he was nearly yanked off his feet by the surprisingly strong albino girl. He still didn't even know who she was yet!

"You already know my name so…who exactly _are_ you again?"

"Oh?" she seemed genuinely puzzled, her tone light-years away from how she had been at the start of his encounter. "I'm Rei."

"Well…Rei. I have a few questio-"

"No. You have to go to your Unit now. It's been fun talking to you but if you don't keep walking after me, _I will kill you_. And then I'll get you up and _kill you again. _And it will _still_ be nicer than what will happen to you if you stay here and talk. Now _follow._"

Her grip on his arm tightened, sending spikes of pain through him as she quite literally began to drag him down the street.

Shinji had no idea of what to do. He was trapped with a possibly-homicidal, certainly-insane girl was dragging him off somewhere he could only hope was what she said it was. But she was right in that the evacuation alarms were sounding. Did he remember the way back to Misato's apartment? What if he got lost? What exactly was out there that they needed the alarms for?

A white skull flashed through his mind briefly.

Maybe it was just better to follow this Rei. She sounded like she knew where she was going, anyway.

Having decided to go along with this for now he sped up, only to slam into the corpse-girls back as she drew to a sudden stop.

"It's too late. Sorry Shinji."

000

"How is the evacuation proceeding?"

"Over 90% of the general populace have retreated into the Geofront."

"Excellent."

Gendo sat back as he observed the tides of humanity through his view-screen. While the Geofront was incredibly impermeable to kaiju-sized beings such as Spirits or Servants, there were many, many human-sized entranceways leading from the surface down to the Geofront. It allowed for quick evacuation while keeping a strong defence against an incoming Servant.

Now that the civilians of Tokyo-3 were out of way, the true battle of Spirit and Servant could begin. Or at least, it _should. _Neither of the Servants had been considerate to show themselves, aside from that brief surfacing that one had done off the coast. And as for now the Spirits were still woefully out of action with both Rei and Shinji seemingly having gone AWOL. Luckily Asuka had been located and was en-route to the Geofront to pilot the newly arrived Unit-02. Her skill with unlocking and releasing its PHANTASM should be able to hold down the fort until the First and Third were located. Misato was leading a team on the surface to find them now.

It was nowhere near a good situation, but they would hold. The Geofronts defences will, no _must _hold.

This confidence was broken by the sound of screams.

Moments later, an explanation was forthcoming from Aoba.

"There's an attack! No Servants but…"

The main view-screen shifted to show the tide of humanity flooding into the Geofront begin to thin and split apart as a small army of monsters began to pour in through the entrances.

Armed NERV personnel took immediate action and opened fire on the shapeless monstrosities. The air was filled with gore as the bullets wantonly tore and ripped chunks out of the monsters. Despite these injuries, they kept coming and it seemed as if it took nearly an entire round to be emptied into one of them before it stopped moving.

And whenever one of the demons fell, more would always be slipping through the evacuation entrances, those that had been so wonderfully designed to stop building sized monsters from entering but did absolutely _nothing _to stop human sized intruders.

It only took a moment to come to a conclusion. The Geofront had already been compromised but it was not an unsalvageable situation. Their guards and defences could probably deal with the ones already inside, but if they kept coming…

"Seal the entrances. All of them."

Fuyutsuki spoke up.

"But there are people still outside."

"Sometimes you need to sacrifice many to save even more. You of all people should know that by now, Fuyutsuki. We'll bottle ourselves up in here and send Unit-02 out to burn them all."

"But that's the problem! Pilot Langley and her escort have just entered the tunnels. If you give the order to seal now, they'll be stuck outside with the monsters. No Pilots, no Spirit Units!"

This line of reasoning forced Gendo to stop and think. However, a single glance to the view-screens steeled him. Their scattered line of defence was about to be overrun if they didn't stem the alien tide.

"…She's a magical prodigy isn't she? She can take care of herself long enough. Ritsuko! Tell the MAGI to seal off absolutely every point of access."

"Aye."

As the battle continued, the entranceways slowly sealed shut. The screams off those trapped outside with the bulk of the demons rose in volume before being cut off entirely as thick metal slabs rolled across the gateways.

Gendo did a quick mental calculation over how many deaths he may just have caused before slowly letting out his breath.

"Don't worry Fuyutsuki. We need the Pilots. Arrangements will be made for her."

"Arrangements?"

Gendo pushed up his glasses, the blank orange lenses reflecting the scattered gunfire shown through the view-screens.

"Arrangements."

000

"What is that thing?"

Shinji was whispering as he crouched behind Rei, the crazy albino girl seemingly going through one of her nicer phases. He'd begun to get rather good at suppressing the revulsion he felt from being near her, though skin contact still felt horrible.

"You know, I really have absolutely no idea. If I were going to guess though, I'd say they were demons, creatures that distort natural laws. It's probably qualifies as a Fiend of some sort actually so this is pretty good."

"Pretty good? What, are 'Fiends' weaker than usual Demons?"

"Not at all. In fact, they might be stronger."

"Then _how _is this 'pretty good'? At all?"

"Well, I've never gotten to see one of the Fiendish Kind before. It's rather interesting."

The object of their speculation was around the corner, outside of the small alleyway that they were crouched in.

It was roughly human-sized, but the similarities stopped there. As far as Shinji could tell, it had absolutely no defined features beyond a single circular mouth lined with vicious looking jagged teeth. The rest of its body was a constantly shifting formless mass of tentacles and pseudopods.

It seemed to be alone and whatever hidden aural capabilities it might have didn't seem to have been enough to pick out their whispering.

Shinji and Rei had come across it rather unexpectedly and were forced to take cover lest it see them…somehow. It didn't really seem to have any eyes to see with in the first place but neither of them felt like taking chances.

They had been hiding from it's presence for what felt to be the better part of half an hour and it still showed no sign of moving.

"It's fascinating isn't it? It doesn't look like any kind of ogre that I've ever heard of but if they're anything like each other, they don't actually have _any _Magic Circuits. Instead they generate magic just by living. It makes you think, doesn't it?"

Personally, the only thoughts they were inspiring in Shinji were _'we're all going to die horrible painful deaths'_ and_ 'that is the ugliest thing I have ever seen, bar none_".

Remembering her threats of painful death, he felt it was only tactful not to tell her this.

The apparent 'fiend' shifted only to settle down back into its solitary position, quashing Shinji's hopes that it might finally be moving.

"So…what do you think is going on?"

"Don't know," she replied, nowhere near as talkative as she was before. As they'd been together through the early morning, Shinji had begun to detect a pattern in the girl's strange mood shifts.

The one she was in now was often rather unresponsive and silent but it was also Rei at her least cruel and randomly malicious towards him. It was probably the best chance he would ever get to answer the question that had been bugging him for over an hour by now.

"Hey, Rei. Why…Why are you…Why are you …the way you are?"

As predicted, the girl didn't even blink or shift her gaze.

"Shattered," she said, as if it was the simplest thing in the world.

"Shattered?"

"If you pull something in too many different directions, it breaks."

She turned towards him, her face twisted into a nasty smirk and Shinji immediately knew he had made the wrong decision.

"Observe."

000

The wretched thing groped along the ground, surrounded in a mess of it's own pulverized body. It reared up, maw dripping blood and broken teeth, only to be brought back to the ground by a hail of bullets. Its twitching body was riddled with holes until it stopped moving and dissolved into a frothing broth of flesh.

Corporal Saruwatari wrinkled his nose at the stench.

"Looks like it's seafood tonight!"

The nearby soldiers laughed, more out of relief to be alive than from any perceived humour. The monsters were like pitbulls; once they got their teeth in, they didn't let go. Behind the defense lines, the medics sat on their hands. There was little for them to do, as anyone bitten by the monsters died a quick painful death.

But despite all this, the superiority of modern ranged firepower had won the day. While some monsters had reached biting range, the majority had been gunned down beforehand, their corpses filling a killing ground that stretched from their defensive position to the sealed gates to the tunnels outside.

The laughter began to give way to strangled screams as several of the gunmen fell to their knees vomiting.

"What?" He cried out.

Saruwatari flinched as he was hit in the chest by one of the more explosive vomiters. He had time to see the lines of blood in the sticky glob of sick before he felt his own gorge rise. The contents of his stomach were violently evacuated; he barely had enough time to get to his knees before it happened.

He lost consciousness and fell face-forward into his own bodily waste, his last thought being of the long string of blood running down his chin. The medics later found him drowned in his own fluids.

000

"We're taking more casualties!" Aoba said.

"What? The hostiles are dead. Where from?" Fuyutsuki replied.

"Reports getting back are indistinct but they…they say it's some kind of biological weapon!"

Gendo froze as one of his hands automatically reached for his glasses. No. He had only three full uses at most of it inside of him before it's metaphysical weight ripped his Circuits to shreds.

It had been stupid and rash of him to use even its passive effects to subdue Shinji for his pivotal role. To use it on such inconsequential beings would be a last resort, especially when there were more mundane methods to be used. But…he felt it pulling at him, tiny words chanting endlessly in his mind. Words that were slowly etching over his brain and overriding everything else.

He was not meant to have these alien things in his body.

He slowly became aware that everyone in command centre was looking at him, waiting for orders. He feigned to be simply adjusting his glasses.

"Order everyone there to retreat, if they haven't done so already. Ritsuko, deploy a quartet of mages who have the knowledge to purify the area and cleanse it of malignant magical influences."

"Right away," the blonde replied. "With gas-masks, I assume?"

"…If they must."

000

The Other sang soundlessly into the shattered void that was it's perception of the world around it. Once again, the Other felt the pressure from the reality of this world attempt to stifle its birthing cries but its silent song would not be ignored. The Supreme Reality Marble it back shattered. A world that was nothing but fading reflections of a broken mirror of stars could not assert authority over the Other, even in this strange place on the flip side of the Spiral where all was different.

Time was different here. No fluid flow and regular stops but infinite multitudes of shattered separate moments flying past, separated from each other at a tiny level, the universe breaking further in each one.

The Fourth was still refusing to be digested, clogging the Other's worldmaw with its impossible size.

It's thoughts kept intruding on his choirmind, spreading discord through the previously untarnished Other.

Enough. Is it not good enough that We recognize you as an existence separate of the shard reflection lives?

The Fourth had invoked the Other into existence, a god bearing into the mirror world on a pile of it's fluid children.

**Was it not enough that your physicality continued to live inside of Us?**

Apparently not. Foreign concepts continued to edge into the Other's mind, the primary concept being 'art'.

**The Concepts of this world are as broken as its mirror and resemble nothing of the Concept list We see in the Old Records. What is 'Art'?**

Answers slowly snaked into the chorus, as fractured as their speaker. Art was the shrieks of pain given by an impaled infant, the slow moans of a man when you slowly ripped his skin off and turned his organs inside out. Art was the crack of bone beneath you as you readjusted them properly, the twisting of the spine into a more aesthetic shape. Art was the pain a women felt as her body was intruded upon and filled to the brim by a swirling mass of effluvia and flesh. Art was the reshaping of other's lives, their destiny bent to yours. Art was pain and love and life and glory.

But the one thing Art wasn't was death. Art was life. Art was best when masterpieces were alive to see what had become of them, tears of joy and gratitude in those who still had eyes.

**This new concept is strange to Us but interest is obtained. Take the fingers and show Us your Art on the shard things that are still alive.**

With the Fourth now occupied, the Other saw the battle between it's fingers fighting the tiny consciousnesses that momentarily sprang forth from the reflections of the broken mirror stars of this universe.

The illusions coughed and nibbled at some of the Other's fingers that had penetrated into the womb. They pushed slugs of this broken world into its fingers and had toppled them momentarily while the Other had been focussing the majority of its choir on the Fourth-remnant.

But the Other was real. They were not. Ergo, any damage utilised by the reflection creatures was illusory and could be ignored as the petty distractions they were.

Not only that, but the Other's finger had touched some of the scattered lights now, crushing most but only subduing some. This was a paradox. They were not real, yet the Other inside their systems was. The only way to resolve this paradox was if those reflection people were not reflection people, but were fingers of the Other instead.

The choir discussed it for the briefest of the shattered time-flow before decreeing this logic to be impeccable.

000

Maya shifted uncomfortably in her seat, the scratch of the gasmask against her face and the weight of the air-tank on her back bothering her. She and three others of NERV's primary Magecraft department were en route to the outskirts of the Geofront. Along with them came a large medical team, loaded with supplies.

It still occasionally felt strange being so close to technology, despite the fact that mages had been doing it more and more since the Second Impact. NERV was the odd man out of course, a collection of heretics who were exploring the furthest bounds of technology and magecraft that had culminated in the Spirit Units.

Her thoughts were cut off as the carriage rolled to a stop.

A short walk later and they reached the rendezvous point where what was left of the NERV's own armed forces had fallen back to. The medical team got immediately to work helping the medics already there on tending to the wounded and the infected.

Maya turned to the other mages sent with her to check their readiness to perform the purification magecraft.

She prepared her end of the ritual but once again she was interrupted by the cries of the others.

The field of dead monsters began to writhe, as if a tide of tiny insects began to flow over it. A corpse raised its head and went into an impossible spasm as it burst apart only to be reborn as another demon. The grisly scene repeated itself across the battlefield.

The screams intensified as the soldiers watched as those who died from the fumes melted into goo; the effluent pooling together spawn more demons. Those alive had their screams silenced by tendrils ripping out of their orifices. The tentacles violated their innards, crushing and shredding the men into chunks of wet, sopping meat. Corrupted remains split open and gave a horrible mockery of birth.

A hasty magic shot ripped one of the newborn abominations apart only for a new monster to rise from its corpse.

"Run!" shouted one of the few surviving soldiers.

And so they did. The train was still at its station, its driver gawking openly at the incoming horde. Maya was the first on board, her heart thumping a mile a minute.

What just happened? _What just happened?_ Her thoughts were jumbled into an incoherent mess at processing what she had just seen.

The small carriage became overcrowded as the survivors piled in.

"What are you waiting for," the normally quiet Lieutenant roared at the driver. "Go! Go! Gooooo!"

000

The command center watched with a mixture of silent fascination and horror at the scene portrayed. Ritsuko was the first to speak and state the obvious.

"The demons are clearly more powerful than expected."

"Yes…" Fuyutsuki replied, trying to understand what he had just seen. For some reason, it was striking him as horribly familiar.

To the elder man's left, Gendo was once again finding his mind wandering back to using it. Not yet. Not yet.

But what other options did he have? Out of the five weapons in the Conceptual Armoury, three were anti-unit weapons that would have little effect on stopping a massed attack, one wasn't even a weapon at all by most standards and the other couldn't be wielded by anything less than a Spirit Unit.

Speaking of Spirit Units…Yes that could work. They'd already sent Asuka the means after all. And communication with her and what was left of the above-side teams were still possible. They could relay their instructions to them. And if the Spinal Column was still a go…

Yes.

"Sound the Imminent Secondary Breach alarm and proceed with those protocols as described. Ritsuko and Fuyutsuki, follow me."

"Actually," Fuyutsuki disagreed "I need to retire to my study. I have a very disturbing hunch."

"Then go," Gendo said. "You weren't going to be particularly useful for this anyway."

As Fuyutsuki left, Gendo turned back to Ritsuko.

"We need the Spirits prepped immediately."

"But who is there to pil-"

He cut her off. "Assemble your underlings and do it now. Don't ask."

000

Shinji bit back a scream. Literally. His mouth filled with the taste of his own blood as his teeth crushed part of his tongue. The arm that Rei was holding had twisted and curled in on itself, moving like putty underneath the girl's fingertips. He tried to scream again but his teeth had fused together into a single bone plate, sealing his mouth.

He flailed wildly with his free hand only for Rei to grab it and somehow, rip it off entirely. The mangled wreck of his arm socket inverted and turned into a massive mouth that began to grind its teeth against what was left of his skeleton.

Shinji would have liked to believe that the events of the past few days had allowed him to build up a significant pain tolerance. He was wrong.

One of his legs actually managed to connect with the side of Rei's head, smacking her body against the wall where she lay motionless. For a few seconds, Shinji was allowed to believe that it couldn't get any worse.

A pair of inhumanly hot hands grabbed his legs, sending him spasming in further pain as his last remaining limbs liquefied. The grey haired girl entered his field of vision, licking the residue off her fingers.

"I think I'll take your eyes last. This way, you get to watch."

Time seemed to stretch into a horrible eternity of pain as she carefully and meticulously removed his remaining internal organs. After that, she reached further inside of him, his flesh moulding around her hands as she pulled out his bones, one by one. He flopped helplessly as she flayed him open, ripping him apart piece by piece.

Shinji eventually emerged from his daze of pain to see Rei's face directly in front of him, the pressure of her fingers all around him. His body had been completely destroyed, save the single eyeball Rei was holding. The eyeball that she had transferred the remnants of Shinji's consciousness into.

Studying it for a moment, she closed her hand around it into a tight fist, feeling it's gooey remains ooze out between her fingertips and onto the ground.

Every sense he had left could only register that. Through mists of blood, he saw Rei loom over the small pile of slime that was now him.

"Don't worry, Shinji. You won't die. Ever."

.

..

…

….

…..

…

Shinji fell back, landing on his back on the pavement. He couldn't think, his thoughts clouded with only the feeling of immense pain. After a few agonising minutes, it began to clear. He tried to remember what had just happened, but his mind drew a blank every time, recalling nothing save the endless eternities of pain and those red eyes.

A hand brushed against his arm, causing him to twitch back fearfully for reasons he could no longer remember. They were still in the alleyway, the thing was still lurking obliviously outside and the girl was still staring at him.

"You really don't have _any_ training do you? I heard about your upbringing, but I almost didn't believe it until just now. Your complete lack of mental defences is pitiful."

"…Ergh? What just happened? What did you do?"

"You were asking annoying questions so I decided to mess with your mind a bit. None of it was real, though I'm pretty sure you weren't able to tell at the time. I took the effort of making sure you don't remember most of it by the way. You should thank me for that."

"What? Are you crazy? Why the hell would I thank you for t-that!"

"_Thank me Shinji."_

He felt his mouth lock up as it began moving on it's own accord, his tongue following suit.

"…Thank you, Rei."

"There, that wasn't so hard now was it?"

Rubbing his jaw, Shinji slumped down further. Rei was dangerous, and clearly insane to boot. If he stuck around her too long, it wouldn't be the monsters that killed him. But she had told him that running away from her now would be a certain death sentence and he believed her.

His only ray of hope was that this was only for one night. It was only until he got back to the Geofront. Then he would never have to deal with this strange girl again.

"Well, would you look at that!"

Oh god. She was suddenly cheerful again. He made to edge away before she grabbed him by the collar and dragged him out of the alleyway _and right to where the monster was!_

"Rei! REI!"

His screams must have worked because she dropped him unceremoniously onto the road.

"It's fine now," she said. "The demon must have left while we were preoccupied."

It was about time. Anything to shorten their travel time together. She helped him up, Shinji noting that he was slowly becoming used to the corpse-girl's loathsome touch. He still didn't know _why_ she felt like that though. And he sure wasn't going to ask her a personal question like that. Never again.

And so they walked a curved and twisted path through the silent city, a path that Rei insisted would take them to safety and avoid the remaining monsters at the same time. Did she know where the monsters were? Not worth thinking about. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other and he'll be safe, away from the monsters and the grey girl. J-just keep walking.

Step.

Step.

Step.

Time dragged on and he began to slump, a tremor entering his pace. He hadn't slept at all since the Third Servant hospitalised him. Too much, too fast. Unconsciously, he began to lean against Rei. In his fatigue he no longer cared about her crawling and unsettling touch or her seemingly endless supply of cruelty and unpredictable malice. She nearly stumbled for a moment before hesitantly putting her arm around him and supporting his half-asleep frame.

Not long after and he had fallen asleep entirely.

000

He was on a train.

Rei was sitting next to him, her arm around him. But it was strangely alright. The wriggling under her skin, the hungry heat and the dead cold were all right. This was how she was supposed to be.

Rei was also sitting on the other side of him. And on the seat across from him. The compartment was filled with Rei.

The floor of the carriage was slick with blood running from a body hanging from the ceiling. He had never seen that girl before.

000

Shinji opened his eyes blearily. He was lying on the sidewalk. His ribs kind of hurt from…something. Why did his ribs hurt?

A few seconds later he had his answer as a foot nudged his chest ungently.

"Hey you! I know you're alive! You're name is Shinji, right? What do you think you're doing here?"

The sun was just beginning to rise, the light providing a fuzzy halo around the red-haired head of the girl standing in front of his prone form.

"Don't you have a job to do?"


End file.
